Title : Chapter 5:THE USE OF MEAT: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
link : Chapter 5:THE USE OF MEAT: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
Chapter 5:THE USE OF MEAT: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
THE USE OF MEAT
I AM asked many questions as to my
attitude toward the question of meat-
eating. I was brought up on a diet
of meat, bread and butter, potatoes,
and sweet things. Four years ago
when I found myself desperately run
down, suffering from nervousness, in-
somnia, and almost incessant head-
aches, I came upon various articles
written by vegetarians, and I began to
suspect that my trouble might be due
to meat. I went away on a camping
trip for several weeks, taking no meat
with me, and because I found that I
was a great deal better, I believed that
the meat had been responsible for my
trouble. I then visited the Battle
141
THE FASTING CURE
Creek Sanitarium, and became
familiar with all their arguments
against meat, and thereafter I did not
use it for three years. I called myself
a vegetarian; but at the same time 1
realized that I differed from most
vegetarians in some important par-
ticulars.
For instance, I had never taken any
stock in the arguments for vege
tarianism upon the moral side. It has
always seemed to me that human
beings have a right to eat meat, if
meat is necessary for their best
development, either physical or men-
tal. I have never had any sympathy
with that ' * humanitarianism ' ' which
tells us that it is our duty to regard
pigs and chickens as our brothers. I
was listening the other day to one of
these enthusiasts, who had been read-
ing aloud one of the " Uncle Remus "
142
THE USE OF MEAT
stories, and who went on in touching
language to set forth the fact that his
vegetable garden constituted one place
where " Bre'r Rabbit " was free to
wander at will and to help himself;
and he described how happy it made
him to see these gentle animals hop-
ping about among his cabbages, having
lost all their fear of him. That sort
of thing will work very well so long as
it is confined to one farm, and so long
as there is a hunting season upon all
the other farms in the locality ; but let
the humanitarians proceed to apply
their regimen in a whole state, and
they will soon have so many billions of
rabbits hopping about among their
cabbages that they will have to choose
between shooting rabbits or having no
cabbages.
The reader, I presume, is familar
with calculations which show the rate
143
THE FASTING CURE
at which rabbits multiply, how many
tens and hundreds of millions would
be produced by a single pair of rabbits
in ten years. It should be quite ob-
vious that the time would come when
all human beings would be spending
their energies in planting gardens to
support rabbits ; and that if ever they
stopped planting gardens, there would
be a famine for the rabbits, with in-
finitely more suffering than is involved
in the present method of keeping them
down. Also, even though the humani-
tarians might have their way with
men, the hawks and the owls and the
foxes would probably remain unre-
generate. I remember, when I was a
small boy, being sternly rebuked by an
agitated maiden lady who discovered
me throwing stones at a squirrel. Not
so many days afterwards, however,
the lady discovered the squirrel en-
144
THE USE OF MEAT
gaged in carrying off young birds from
a nest outside her window, and she
found her theories about ' ' kindness to
dumb animals " rudely disturbed.
The same thing, it seems to me, is
still more true of domestic animals.
Domestic animals survive on earth
solely because of the protection of
man, and for the sake of the benefits
they bring to him. If it is necessary
to human health and well-being to
slaughter a cow rather than to wait
and let her die of old age and lingering
disease, it seems to me that nothing but
mawkish sentimentality would protest.
It is pointed out to us what places
of cruelty and filth our slaughter-
houses are ; the reader may believe that
I learned something about this in my
preparations for the writing of ' * The
Jungle." But then this is not neces-
sarily true about slaughter-houses —
145
THE FASTING CURE
any more than it is necessarily true
that railroads must kill and maim a
couple of hundred thousand people in
this country every year. In Europe
they have municipal slaughter-houses
which are constructed upon scientific
lines, and in which no filth is permit-
ted to accumulate; also they have
devised means for the killing of
animals which are painless. In the
stockyards I have seen a man standing
upon a gallery, leaning over and
pounding at the head of a steer with a
hammer, and making half a dozen
blows before he succeeded in knocking
down the terrified animal. In Europe,
on the other hand, they fit over the
head of the animal a leathern cap,
which has in it a steel spike ; a single
tap upon the head of this spike is suf-
ficient to drive it into the animal's
brain, causing instant insensibility.
uc
THE USE OF MEAT
And it must be borne in mind also
that the sufferings of dumb animals
are entirely different from our own.
They do not suffer the pains of antici-
pation. A cow walks into a
slaughter-house without fear, and
stands still and permits a leathern
cap to be fitted over its head without
suspicion; and while it is placidly
grazing in the field, it is untroubled by
any consciousness of the fact that next
week it will be hanging in a butcher's
shop as beef. I recall in this con-
nection an observation of that wise
philosopher, Mr. Dooley, concerning
the inhumanities of vegetarianism. He
said that it had always seemed to him
a very cruel thing ' * to cut off a young
tomato in its prime, or to murder a
whole cradle full of baby peas in the
pod."
These things will convince the
U7
THE FASTING CURE
devotee of the religion of vege-
tarianism that I am a lost soul, and
always have been. Perhaps so. I try
to guide my conduct by scientific know-
ledge; what I ask to know about the
question of meat-eating is the actual
facts of its effect upon the human
organism — the amount of energy
which it develops, the diseases which
it causes, or, on the contrary,
the immunity to disease which it
claims to confer; also, of course, its
cheapness and convenience as an
article of diet. Some evidence of this
sort we possess; but very little, it
seems to me, in proportion to the im-
portance of the subject. Professor
Fishef has conducted some thorough
experiments as to the influence of
meat-eating upon endurance, which
seem to develop the fact that vege-
tarians possess a far greater amount
148
THE USE OF MRAT
of endurance than meat-eaters. These
experiments are what we want, but
they seemed to me, when I read them,
to be weak in one or two important
particulars. They did not tell us
what the vegetarians ate, nor what the
meat-eaters ate. Those who are vege-
tarians at the present day are very apt
to be people who have given some
thought to the question of diet, and
have attempted to adopt sounder ways
of life ; while, on the other hand, meat-
eaters are generally people who have
given no thought to the question of
health at all — they are very apt to be
smokers and drinkers as well as meat-
eaters. Also it is to be pointed out
that endurance is not the only factor
of importance to our physical well-
being.
There have been numerous exposi-
tions of the greater liability of meat to
149
THE FASTING CFRE
contamination. Dr. Kellogg, for in-
stance, has purchased specimens of
meat in the butcher-shops, and has had
them examined under the microscope,
and has told us how many hundreds of
millions of bacteria to the gram have
been discovered. This argument has
a tendency to appal one ; I know it had
great effect upon me for a long time,
and I took elaborate pains to take into
my system only those kinds of food
which were sterilized, or practically
so. This is the health regimen which
is advocated by Professor Metchnikoff ;
one should eat only foods which have
been thoroughly boiled and sterilized.
I have come, in the course of time, to
the conclusion that this way of living
is suicidal, and that there is no way of
destroying one's health more quickly.
I think that the important question is,
not how many bacteria there are in the
150
THE USE or MEAT
food when you swallow it, but how
many bacteria there come to be in food
after it gets into your alimentary
canal. The digestive juices are
apparently able to take care of a very
great number of germs ; it is after the
food has passed on down, and is lodged
in the large intestine, that the real fer-
mentation and putrefaction begin —
and these count for more, in the ques-
tion of health, than that which goes on
in the butcher-shop or the refrigerator
or the pantry.
Do not misunderstand what I mean
by this. I am not advocating that
anyone should swallow the bacteria of
deadly diseases, such as typhoid and
cholera ; I am not advocating that any-
one should use food which is in a
state of decomposition — on the con-
trary, I have ruled out of my dietary a
number of foods in common use which
161
THE FA3TINQ CURE
depend for their production upon bac-
terial action; for instance, beer and
wine, and all alcoholic drinks, all
kinds of cheeses, sauerkraut, vinegar,
etc. My point is simply that the
ordinary healthy person has no reason
for terrifying himself about the com-
mon aerobic bacteria — which swarm in
the atmosphere, and are found by hun-
dreds of millions in all raw food, and
in cooked food which has not been kept
with the elaborate precautions that a
surgeon uses with his instruments and
linen ; also that the real problem is to
take into the system those foods which
can be readily digested and assimi-
lated, and which afford the body all the
elements that it needs to keep itself i.i
the best condition for the inevitable,
incessant warfare with the hostile
organisms which surround it.
So far as meat is concerned, of
\6&
THE USB OP MEAT
course no sensible person would use
meat which showed the slightest trace
of being spoiled, nor any meat which
had been canned, or ground up and
made into messes, such as sausage. If
one uses reasonably fresh meat, the
bacteria which may be on the outside
of it will be killed by proper cooking.
And so the question is, it seems to me,
what does meat do after it gets into
the stomach? And that is a matter
for practical experiment, which very
few people have made so far as I have
any information. Innumerable people
are eating meat, of course; but they
are eating it in combination with all
other kinds of destructive foods, and
they are eating it prepared in innu-
merable unwholesome ways. So far
as I know, no scientist has ever taken
a group of normal men and kept them
for a certain period upon a rational
153 L
THE FASTING CURB
vegetarian diet, and then put them for
another period upon a diet containing
broiled fresh meat, and made a
thoroughly scientific study of their
condition, as, for instance. Professor
Chittenden did for his ' ' low proteid ' '
experiments.
For about a year previous to read-
ing about Dr. Salisbury's " meat
diet," I had been following the raw-
food regimen. I had gained wonder-
ful results from this and I had written
a good deal about it; but I had got
these results while leading an active
life, and not doing hard brain-work. I
found continually that when I settled
down to a sedentary life, and to writ-
ing which involved a great nervous
strain, I began to lose weight on raw
food; and if I kept on with this regi-
men, I would begin to have headaches,
and other signs of distress from what
154
THE USE OF MEAT
I was eating. As an illustration of
what I mean, I might say that quite
recently I plunged into a novel in
which I was very much absorbed, and
I lost twelve pounds in sixteen days;
and this, it must be understood, with-
out changing my diet in the slightest
particular. I went on with the work
for about six weeks, and by that time I
had lost twenty pounds. In explain-
ing this to myself, I was divided be-
tween uncertainty as to whether I was
working too hard, or whether I was
eating too much. Finally I took the
precaution to weigh what I was eat-
ing, and to make quite certain that I
was eating no more than I had been
accustomed to eat during periods when
I had remained at my normal weight.
I then cut the quantity of my food in
half, and found that I lost much less
rapidly. This served to convince me
155
THE FASTING CURB
that the trouble lay in the fact that
I had not sufficient nervous energy
left to assimilate the food that I was
taking.
And I have known others to have
this same experience. Bernarr Mac-
fadden, in particular, told me that he
could not get along upon the nut and
fruit diet while closely confined in his
office, and that he found the solution
of his problem in milk. Inasmuch as
there is nothing that poisons me quite
so quickly as milk, I had to look
farther for my solution. As a matter
of fact, I had been looking for this
solution for more than ten years,
though it is only quite recently that I
had come to understand the problem
clearly. It is a problem which every
brain-worker faces; and I am sure,
therefore, that there will be many who
will find the report of my experiments
156
THE USB OF MEAT
and blunders to be of interest to them.
I have tried, under these circum-
stances, all kinds of the more diges-
tible foods — toast, rice, baked potatoes,
baked apples, milk, poached eggs, and
so on; always I have found that these
foods digested perfectly, but they
poisoned my system because of their
constipating effect; and this was a
dilemma which I was never able to get
around.
I now read Dr. Salisbury's book,
'* The Relation of Alimentation to
Disease." Many of his experiments I
found extremely interesting. Dr.
Salisbury described the consequences
of the ordinary starch and sugar diet
as making a " yeast-pot " of one's in-
testinal tract. I found in my own
case many of the symptoms which he
described, and I determined to see
what would be the effect of the meat
diet in my case.
157
THB FASTING CURB
I began the experiment with reluc-
tance. I had lost all interest in the
taste of meat, and I had a prejudice
against it ; I hated the smell of it, and
I hated the feeling of it, and I was
prepared for the direst consequences,
according to the prophecies of my
vegetarian friends. I should not have
been at all surprised if I had been
made very ill by my first meal. I was
prepared to allow for that, supposing
that after three years I had perhaps
forgotten how to digest meat. To my
surprise, however, I found no difficulty
at all. I soon gave up preparing the
meat according to the elaborate pre-
scription of Dr. Salisbury, and con-
tented myself simply with eating good
lean beef -steak. I continued the ex-
periment for two weeks, living upon
meat exclusively. I found that all my
symptoms of stomach trouble disap-
m
THE USB OF MEAT
peared, and I had no headaches what-
ever. I got quite weak upon the exclu-
sive diet, but this was according to
Dr. Salisbury's statement; just as soon
as I added a little shredded wheat bis-
cuit and dried fruit to the menu this
trouble disappeared, and I gained in
weight with great rapidity, and was
soon back where I had been before.
I did not continue the diet, owing
partly to distaste for it, and partly to
the inconvenience of it. I had accus-
tomed myself to the raw food way of
living, and any one who knows what
this means can understand my distaste
for washing plates and scraping fry-
ing-pans, and going to the bother of
getting fresh meat and keeping it and
cooking it. Also, of course, there was
the item of expense. Upon the raw-
food diet I had been able to live for
ten cents a day. I am never accus-
159
THE FASTING CURE
tomed to spending more than thirty or
forty cents a day, even when indulging
in abundant fresh fruit.
Perhaps I ought also to specify that
a good deal of the success of the diet
may have been owing to the hot-water
regimen which is a part of it. An
hour or two before every meal one is
supposed to sip at least a pint of very
hot water, which has the effect of
cleansing out the stomach, and stimu-
lates peristaltic action to a remark-
able degree. I had been accustomed
to drink hot water while fasting, but I
had never taken it systematically, as I
did at this time. It is a trick well
worth knowing about.
I ought also to mention the fact that
I suggested to several others that they
try this meat diet. One of them, a
friend who had been eating raw food
at my suggestion, with the very best
160
» i
THE USB OF MEAT
results, began the experiment and con-
tinued for three days, and the results
were most disappointing. This
friend, a woman in middle years, be-
came very ill, with all the symptoms of
stomach trouble, diarrhoea, and
general poisoning. She wrote me that
she gave up the diet at the end of three
days, because she saw no use in making
herself desperately ill. She added : ** I
followed the regimen in every smallest
detail, precisely according to Dr.
Salisbury's direction. You know me,
and you know that when I do a thing
I do it thoroughly, so there is no need
to say any more about that." Which
only goes to show that, as the proverb
has it, *' One man's meat is another
man's poison."
Dr. Salisbury recommends the meat
diet especially in cases of tuberculosis.
He finds that the predisposing cause
161
THE FASTING CUBE
of this disease is " vegetable fermen-
tation." He declares that the exces-
sive starch and sugar diet leads to the
production of yeast spores and other
ferments in the intestinal tract, and
that these are absorbed into the circu-
lation and ultimately clog the small
capillaries in the lungs. Dr. Salis-
bury's theory was set forth over thirty
years ago, and that was before Koch
had made his discovery of the tubercle
bacillus. This discovery would seem
to put Dr. Salisbury's theory out of
court altogether; but as we physical
culturists are inclined to suspect, there
are causes of disease lying behind the
attack of the specific bacillus. These
causes are a depleted blood supply and
a weakened system; and it seems to
me, from what I have observed of con-
sumptives and their diet, that Dr.
Salisbury's theories fit in very well in-
deed with the Koch theory.
162
THE U8B OF MEAT
I wrote recently to Professor Chit-
tenden to ask him what, in his opinion,
would be the effects of the meat diet
upon tuberculosis. He replied that he
knew no reason for believing that it
would be of special benefit but that the
whole subject of diet in tuberculosis
seemed to him to be one concerning
which there was urgent need of experi-
ment and investigation. This is un-
questionably the case. I know no two
physicians who seem to agree in the
diets they prescribe to consumptives,
and I have never met two consumptives
who followed the same regimen. The
general idea seems to be to stuff as
much food in your system as you pos-
sibly can, especially milk and raw
eggs ; and it seems to me quite certain
that, whatever system may be correct,
this system is incorrect.
This much seems to me to be clear :
163
THE FASTING CURB
tuberculosis is a disease brought about
by under-nourishment. It is a disease
to which the poor are especially liable ;
and while this is undoubtedly in part
due to bad air, it is also due to bad
feeding. And when ignorant people
wish to live cheaply, the foods they eat
are the sugar and starch foods. I re-
member in Thoreau'g " Walden " he
sets forth how he lived for many
months upon five or six dollars' worth
of food. He does not give the amount
of the food by weight, so of course we
cannot tell exactly; but he gives the
prices he paid, and the leading articles
in his diet were flour, rice, corn-meal,
molasses, sugar and lard. One is,
therefore, perfectly prepared to learn
that Thoreau died of consumption.
And the same thing, I believe, will hap-
pen to a good many enthusiastic vege-
tarians of my acquaintance. They
161
THE USB OF MEAT
have given up meat, and they have
made up for it by increasing their con-
sumption of bread and crackers, rice
and potatoes, and prepared and pre-
digested cereals, which they eat with
cream and sugar. Even when they use
high proteid food, it is in some form
such as beans, which contain a great
deal of starch, and in a form which is
difficult of digestion. As a result of
this, they are thin and anaemic looking
— they do not seem to be able to put on
flesh by means of intellectual fervour
and an optimistic philosophy. The re-
sult of ray meat-diet experiment has
been to convince me yet more firmly
that the cooked-vegetable diet is the
worst diet in the world for myself. (I
am content to phrase it that way, and
leave it for others to find out about
their own case.) There has been some
agitation in vegetarian circles since
165
THE FASTING CURB
the report has gone around that I have
become a backslider, and have ^one
back to the flesh-pots. I state the
facts here for what they may be worth
to others. I shall never call myself a
" vegetarian " again — though I shall
be a vegetarian the greater part of the
time.
For it should be noted, of course,
that the objections which I have
brought against the cooked vegetarian
diet do not apply at all to the raw-food
diet, which is entirely a different
matter. If one lives upon nuts, whole
grains boiled or shredded, salad vege-
tables and fruits, he does not get an
excess of either starch or sugar, but a
perfectly balanced dietary, every
article of which is rich in natural salts
— in which the starchy foods, and
especially the prepared cereals, are
fatally deficient. Such a diet can be
166
THE USE OF MEAT
followed by any person in normal
health, who is leading a physically
active life. I have known a number
of people, old and young, to start out
upon this way of life without any pre-
liminaries, and they have noted a
great gain in health and efficiency, and
have had no trouble of any sort. This
diet is as cheap as the bean and white
flour and rice diet of the ordinary
" vegetarian," and it is, by all odds,
the simplest and most convenient diet
in the world.
I have been accustomed all my life
to think of meat as a very " heavy "
article of food, an article of food
suited for men doing hard physical
labour; it is a curious fact that the
view I am setting forth here is pre-
cisely the opposite. So long as I am
doing hard physical labour, whether it
is walking ten miles a day, or playing
167
THE PASTING CURB
tennis, or building a house, I get along
perfectly upon the raw food ; but when
I settle down for long periods of
thinking and writing — often sitting
for six hours without moving from one
position — I find that I need something
else, and nothing has answered that
purpose quite so well as beef -steak. It
appears to be, so far as I am con-
cerned, the most easily digested and
most easily assimilated of foods. And
because the work that I am doing
seems to me to be important, I am will-
ing to make the sacrifice of money and
time and trouble which it necessitates.
My diet at such times will consist of
beef or chicken, shredded wheat bis-
cuit, and a little fruit. If any one is
disposed to follow my example and
make this experiment, I beg to call his
attention especially to the fact that I
name these three kinds of food, and
168
THE USE OF MEAT
none others; and that I mean these
three kinds and none others. The main
trouble with advising anybody to eat
meat is that he proceeds to eat it in the
everyday world, where it means not
the eating of broiled lean beef, but also
of bacon and eggs, and of bread and
butter, and of potatoes with cream
gravy, and of rice pudding and
crackers and cheese and coffee. Please
do not proceed to eat these things and
then hold meat-eating responsible for
the consequences.
I do not for a moment wish to give
the impression that I believe that
meat-eating is necessary to a normally
active person, or that humanity will
always continue to eat meat. No in-
vention of science can ever make meat
as cheap a food as nuts and fruit, and
nothing can ever make it as beautiful
or attractive a food, nor as clean a
1G9 U
THE FASTING CURE
food, nor as easily prepared a food. I
believe that children can be brought
up without knowing the taste of meat,
and can be trained to lead normal and
active lives from the very beginning,
and can live on the raw- food diet and
thrive. What I am discussing here
are my own experiences, and I do not
regard myself as a normal specimen of
humanity, because I work a great deal
harder than anybody has a right to
work. I do that because there are so
many idle and useless people in the
world at present — and some have to
make martyrs of themselves, until con-
ditions of injustice and cruelty have
been done away with.
170
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